


Bruises

by WhenIFindLoveAgain



Series: Cherry Wine Series [2]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Domestic Violence, F/M, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Past Domestic Violence, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 18:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21414337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenIFindLoveAgain/pseuds/WhenIFindLoveAgain
Summary: In the Second Part of "Cherry Wine Series" Jisoo terminates his relationship with Hansol after the younger man walks out on him after a terrible fight; Kim Mingyu is formally introduced as a practicing GP. Jisoo moves in with friend, Choi Seungcheol, and re-connects with an old love from America who he self-describes as, "She's absolutely insane. Half Serbian, half Sicilian. Stubborn, sardonic, rude, temperamental, with many shortcomings and a flexible relationship with the truth. Bending the truth and making it work specifically for her the way she did. Trust me, It's one hell of a skill."Complications in four lives begin as Jeonghan's feelings grow, Jisoo heals, and Jisoo's old love makes an impact on Seungcheol, and all of their lives with her habits for not eating, fixing things, and, in general, been a world class, melancholic cow
Relationships: Chwe Hansol | Vernon/Hong Jisoo | Joshua, Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Original Female Character(s), Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Yoon Jeonghan
Series: Cherry Wine Series [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1543057
Kudos: 7





	Bruises

**Author's Note:**

> Bloody hell, I only posted "Blood Is Rare And As Sweet As Cherry Wine" yesterday, and it seems to have gone down really well :))  
Let me introduce, "Bruises", formally. Again, another song is featured throughout this piece been "Bruises" by Lewis Capaldi from his Album, "Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent".  
In the first part of this work, we see what is a virtually Doctor KIm Mingyu to the rescue for Jisoo; Bruises takes off from where Blood Is As Rare And As Sweet As Cherry Wine finished. Directly from it.

_Counting days, counting days_

  
  
"Mingyu? You're Kim Mingyu? Hey, I'm Jisoo's partner; look I need you to come around really, really fucking quickly with some emergency shit." Hansol said quickly, panicking, into Jisoo's phone. "Look, I don't care, right now Jisoo really needs a fucking doctor and a ambulance and a hospitable is not an option. How far away are you? Yeah, yeah, we're at our place, mate."

_Mingyu_, Jisoo thought. _Oh, God, no, not Mingyu. He'll tell Cheolie and Jeonghan...Christ, I feel like shit_

"I don't know what's fucking wrong with him but he can't breathe properly, and he can't stand; he's on the floor and he's got clear fluid shit and thick blood that's getting clotted coming out of his nose and mouth. His chest doesn't look right on one side; it's concaved and it looks like blood underneath the fucking surface - just come the fuck around, you useless piece of shit!" Hansol yelled into the phone.

_I think we did pretty well_, Jisoo thought as his mind clouded over. _It was six months, about that. Something like that. Why did he have to say that stuff to me? He said to me about not yelling and picking fights and trying to define them with shit that's not good for either of us. Whenever I make notes on what needs to happen at my work, what time the head of HR needs to be at that stupid party that all the Directors are having...so what I started at the back page of my notebook and wrote it like that? Why did he have to say, "no wonder people think you're retarded when you do stuff like this?"_

  
  
_Since my love up and got lost on me_

  
  
Hansol left the house, but left the door un-locked for Mingyu to come in. _If he has any fucking decency he wouldn't call the police or make a scene with an ambulance_, Hansol decided. _He'll just go up and there and keep fucking Jisoo from dying on the floor. I'm sick to fucking death with this mental bullshit. If he doesn't want to stay he doesn't have to. What the fuck has the last six months been - just him telling me shit. I've had fucking enough. _

As he drove away in his car, he didn't feel anything. Anger still burned in his veins from the vicious fight with Jisoo, and the stuff Jisoo had said to him. _"You pathetic piece of shit", Jisoo had snarled at him, throwing his notebook at him, hitting Hansol in the face. "Having a go at me over something like that? Do you know how pathetic you sound? Oh, by the way, congratulations. Calling Jeonghan a faggot the other day - he heard! And where the fuck do you come at calling him that? What do you think you and I are, Hansol? Open your eyes! Everytime we fuck - you realize I haven't got a set of tits right? You realize I've got a penis? Well, you fucking should realize all the times it's been pressed up against you while I've been on your lap!"_  
  
  
_And every breath feels that I've been taking_  
  
  
Jisoo reached for his phone, and weakly tapped at it's screen. His Spotify list came up, and with it, "The Scientist" by Coldplay began to play.

  
He saw Mingyu look down at him strangely; _Wait, when did Mingyu get here? How long had he been here, and what was all that stuff coming out of his bag?_ Jisoo winced at the sight of needles, small and large, containers, what looked like small containers of water - some clear, others yellow - little tubes he knew blood at pathology clinics went into, tablets in little boxes, little bottles of injectable medicine. It made his stomach turn over at the sight.

_Sorry, but I just really want that song right now_, Jisoo tried to say, but for every breath he took excruciating pain went through him.

  
"Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry, you don't know how lovely you are..." Chris Marten's voice sung softly.

  
"Jisoo, I'm going to have to put a needle in your chest otherwise you will suffocate by excess blood and the fluid in your lungs not able to flow correctly and be recycled through your system." Mingyu said. "When a lung is punctured it tries to protect itself but it means the person can't breathe; that's why you're struggling with that and you've got all this fluid coming up out of you, okay?"  
  
  
_Since you left feels like a waste on me_  
  
  
Jisoo screamed out, but, despite it he was able to breathe as he looked down and saw this thick wand-like needle with a long tube from it connected to a container. He saw orange-red liquid began to slip down the clear tube towards the container as Mingyu wriggled the wand-like needle a bit, forcefully.

_"My ribs, there's something snapped in there"_, Jisoo typed in a text box on his phone for Mingyu to read as he couldn't speak.

  
Mingyu swore violently, looking down horrified at the wand-like needle now stuck in Jisoo's chest. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit." Mingyu said, so gently pressing his fingertips to Jisoo's horrifically brusied chest. "It's not a collapsed lung, it's a fucking punctured one - hyung, we're going to have to go to a hospitable, otherwise you'll get to the point where you need ICU. You're in a serious condition at the moment.

  
  
_I've been holding onto hope_

  
  
Mingyu held Jisoo hand as he breathed carefully on the small, automatic machine on the wall beside him in the Mercedes Benz ambulance, pumping fluid in and out of his lungs even though Mingyu had nearly had a heart-attack about putting another hole in Jisoo's right lung.

  
Every few breaths, more of the disturbing substance would come up. One of the two paramedics - a middle-aged man and a young woman in her late twenties - had injected some morphine into Jisoo. The pain was lessened, but it had also taken a lot of his cognitive senses with it. There was a numbness in him, but there was a bliss as well over it;

_Classic morphine, just like in the films and the books_, Jisoo thought to himself. He heard the male paramedic talking to Mingyu quietly while the female paramedic drove.

"Was it a family member who assaulted him?"

"No." Jisoo whispered. The male paramedic looked down at him with kind, black-button eyes, his hair salt and pepper colours amongst the black. He reminded Jisoo a bit of his own Father, especially with the lines in his forehead and under his eyes. He was a very handsome man, despite his age.

  
"It was a freak accident. I slipped cleaning in the bathroom; hit the edge of the bath-tub, and I managed to get out into the kitchen. I went down again because I couldn't breathe, I felt something slip, my knee-cap or something down there."

  
  
_That'll you come back when you find some peace_

  
  
  
"How long can you stay?" Jisoo asked Mingyu as the young man explained that he would have to go into theatre to have his lung repaired, along with his ribs, and the tendons around them that had been served by the ribs themselves breaking. X-rays would need to be done of his leg, and when the bruising and the swelling went down, it would have to be taped up. 

"All night, hyung. All night." Mingyu visibly saddened as Jisoo's eyes grew wet despite his will for them to not to.

  
Jisoo shifted the oxygen mask for a moment so he could blow his nose, helped by Mingyu. Jisoo groaned in pain as the gesture made his chest scream.

"You can't sniff the snot back." Mingyu said, a tiny, tiny smile on his face, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Please, don't laugh either if you can help it. All hell will break loose. Can you go to sleep, hyung? You need to rest. Don't try and fight the morphine and the oxygen steroids," Mingyu chuckled softly. "That's the white smoke you're breathing in through the mask." He explained as Jisoo's eyebrow quirked upwards.

"Go to sleep, hyung. I'l be here all night with you."

  
  
  
_'Cause every word that I've heard spoken_  


  
  
Mingyu walked out into the corridor of the ICU ward where Jisoo was allocated for the time being, and called his girlfriend, telling her he wouldn't be home tonight.  
He had known Jisoo for long enough - having met randomly in a bar one day when he was still studying his doctorate of medicine - to know that his two closest friends were Choi Seungcheol and Yoon Jeonghan who everyone know basically due to his former relationship with a Japanese painter.

  
Jisoo wouldn't really want you to do this, his consience told him, but nevertheless, he picked up Jisoo's phone, and called both men, explaining what had happened, and what was going on.  


  
  
_Since you left feels like a hollow street_  
  


  
_How hideous Korean hospitals are_, Jisoo mused to himself in his dreams, a week and a half later. T_hey look so Soviet; harsh and white and clean. Hospitals aren't really meant to have atmosphere, but what would it be like for any woman coming in here to give birth, and all she can see in stainless steel and white and chemical everywhere? It's like a abattoir_. On the side, he thought about a girl he hadn't thought about in a while, partly due to Hansol, but, honestly, been in Korea - the country alone with all of it's own people - banished the lingering thoughts of Teresa Vincent completely. _Teresa Vincent. Stubborn, sardonic, rude, temperamental, with many shortcomings and a flexible relationship with the truth. Bending the truth and making it work specifically for her the way she did; trust me, Jisoo thought, feeling that maybe he was talking to Jeonghan and Seungcheol about her. It's one hell of a skill._

_I've been told, I've been told to get you off my mind_

  
  
  
"Jisoo! Jesus fucking Christ!" Jeonghan yelled over the phone to Jisoo. "Why the fuck is it still this? You can't fucking do this anymore - look what he's fucking done to you! Straight up, you needed a hospitable, a doctor, not calling Mingyu to come around and see you because if you got to an actual fucking hospitable that could actually treat you Hansol would automatically be charged with assault and it wouldn't be fucking wrong! Why can't you just leave him and come be with me or Seungcheol, god, Jisoo! Even - you're better off on your own rather than been with him! You don't need him, Soo. Why can't either me or Cheol wake you up?"  


  
  
_But I hope I never lose the bruises that you left behind_

  
  
  
At Jeonghan's grieving words, Jisoo shrunk in on himself. "I haven't seen him, Hannie. It's over now; the two of us. We don't need to see each other again, talk about it. Mingyu's gone around and got everything of mine - everything. Hansol's putting the flat up for lease, and I'll move in -"

"With Cheol or me." Jeonghan argued. "Have you heard from him yet?"

  
"I want me and my bruises to be alone for a bit; you and Cheol have no place seeing them." Jisoo said, the words coming from a place that was dark and uncomfortable for Jisoo to acknowledge he had in him, though he was happy to use it to his advantage whenever he unconsciously felt to.

Jeonghan was silent on the other side of the line. "In my stuff that Mingyu collected, there is a book - leather wrapped - that has stuff written down in it. Could you search it out and give it to Mingyu? I don't want you coming in and seeing me like this, Jeonghan."   


  
  
_Oh my lord, Oh my lord, I need you by my side_  


  
  
No matter what Jisoo had said, Seungcheol and Jeonghan walked into the hospitable two hours later, find Jisoo in a private room now which he shared with another person; an elderly man who had broken his hip.

  
Only a day before he Jisoo been moved out of ICU; he was still connected to IV drips and oxygen tanks for the damage done to his lungs as they healed, along with his ribs.  
Seungcheol and Jeonghan both managed to squeeze Jisoo enough between the two of them so they could both sit up on his hospitable bed beside him.

  
Jisoo exhaled as he turned the book over, and pulled out printed photographs he had taken in a visit to California last year. "Teresa Vincent." Jeonghan read the writing on the back of one of the photographs. 

  
"No, Not like that. Not Ter-rhee-sa. It's Ter-ra-za." Jisoo didn't smile. "She's absolutely insane. Half Serbian, half Sicilian. Stubborn, sardonic, rude, temperamental, with many shortcomings and a flexible relationship with the truth. Bending the truth and making it work specifically for her the way she did. Trust me, It's one hell of a skill."

  
  
  
_There must be something in the water_  


  
  
Teresa Vincent swam beneath the surface of the freezing cold lake, the winter cold nothing on her skin compared to the skin of other's she knew who would shriek and scream in discomfort of the water's temperature, and scream even more so at her naked figure below the water's surface. When she came up to breathe she saw the mountains emerging around the valley where the lake sat, shades of green and compost as the mid-autumn arrived in Western Russia, and the Winter was getting ready to her it's way down the stairs, the water around her slicking her black hair back against her scalp. Later that evening she was boarding a plane to South Korea; it didn't exactly fill her with enthusiasm. Moscow - even at it's best time of year in the dead of the Winter - had become mundane to her lately, and when she was in her Mother's native Sicily, all they heard was her Russian accent in her Fluent Italian and the Native Sicilian Language. Teresa wondered how much Jisoo's face and his body had changed. Not hearing from somebody much over the couch of five years made everything different. Occasionally she would see him like a photograph on her Instagram or her Twitter; the acknowledgement that she still existed, even when she kissed boys she shouldn't and did things she shouldn't, and refused to do things people said she should.

Shouldn't be swimming naked in freezing cold lakes in the middle of Winter. The cold water electrified her, and released the happy hormones - endorphins - in her brain. Nothing could make Teresa Vincent happy; not many people were even sure what might get her near it, either. But swimming in cold water thirty meters deep was the only thing in the world that made her body change and envelope this emotion that felt so alien at the best of days. Memories of mucking around with Jisoo and kissing him when they were both young adolescents and his stomach was still a bit soft didn't exactly bring a happiness. They brought a knowing recognition, and a tightness, a warmth, in other parts of her body that she would muse over for a while, not often getting that feeling either.

  
_'Cause everyday it's getting colder_

The girl in the photograph was Slavic looking with a drawn-out, heart-shaped face with prominent cheekbones and a thin mouth with thick straight eyebrows that each had a strong tail going down from the wing. She had rich black hair that fell down to her waist, with huge dark, dark brown eyes lined with thick black pencil like a panda. In the photograph she was un-smiling with a cigarette in one hand, dressed in black leather boots, a knee-length black denim skirt, a black lace petticoat, with multiple gold necklaces around her neck and throat. She was leaning against a crumbling brick wall in what looked like a garden.

"Are you and Hansol over? Just like that?" Jeonghan whispered. Jisoo nodded his head curtly. He didn't want to talk about it.

  
"When I came away here to Korea, she went back to being between Sicily and Russia. We only met in the first place because he family built a hotel just down the road from my house I grew up in." Jisoo explained midly, before letting everything go silent.

  
  
  
_And if only I could hold you_

  
  
"You wouldn't even know she's spent a day outside of Russia. She sounds Russian over Italian. She speaks perfect English, but with the heaviest accent." Jisoo said. "If I moved in with either of you, would you be alright have Teresa coming for a while as well?"

Jeonghan cursed his silence as Seungcheol jumped in and said yes.

"I've known her for a long time. It's been a long time for her, as well. She's not a rebound. It's...I won't talk about it." Jisoo said. "It's how it is, and I won't say sorry for it either."

_You'd keep my head from going under_  
  


  
Jisoo kept gazing down often at Teresa's photograph as he healed, and another week and a half later was released from hospitable. Going into Seungcheol's house, he stopped in the doorway as he entered in.

  
There was a scent there amongst the curtains and the floors and the walls of hallway that was familiar and made the pattern of his breathing change and something dawned; a spark igniting in his subconscious. He knew that scent, but had not known it for years. It had blanketed him in his adolescence and before that, when he was a child.  
Jisoo walked up the hallway, suddenly simultaneously familiarly searching and alien in Seungcheol's house. His breath caught in his chest as in the sitting room where a few lamps were turned on and the TV was playing silently, Teresa was sitting on the couch in a black leather mini-skirt, a tight white turtleneck jumper, and a black knitted vest over the top. Her hair was long and loose everywhere, and familiar panda-bear make-up eyes looked at him, her thin lips wearing pale pink lipstick.  
Jisoo smiled at the sight of seeing her long Serbian nose again.

  
  
  
_Maybe I, maybe I'm just being blinded by the brighter side_

  
  
  
"Thank you so much." Jisoo said to Seungcheol, hugging him first thing in the morning the next day as Teresa chopped fruit on a wooden board in the kitchen, and murmured in a mixture of Russian and Italian that Seungcheol realized Jisoo understood perfectly.

"What's she making for us?" Seungcheol asked.

  
"_Sicilianu cannoli_." Jisoo replied. "Cannoli is these tube-shaped shells of fried pastry dough, filled with a sweet, creamy filling usually containing ricotta - it's like a ricotta cream. They range in size from "cannulicchi", no bigger than a finger, to the fist-sized proportions typically found south of Palermo, Sicily, in Piana degli Albanesi. In mainland Italy they are called _cannoli Siciliani_. They're getting-spoiled-just-out-of-hospitable-food."

"She looks like she doesn't eat." Seungcheol said, glancing over to Teresa's undeniably thin frame. "I've seen Kpop girls with more flesh on them than Teresa." 

"Perché quel ragazzo è così maleducato?" Teresa inquired. "Mi è permesso essere magra. Se non voglio mangiare, non manere. Mangio quando ho fame e ho mangiato prima. Due cannoli. Digli di farsi gli affari suoi. È brutto per un coreano. Ma poi tutti sanno che gli odiati giapponesi sono più bello da un miglio, anche se sono bastardi."

_Why is that boy so rude? I'm allowed to be thin. If I don't want to eat, I will not eat. I eat when I am hungry and I ate earlier. Two cannoli. Tell him to mind his own business. He's ugly for a Korean man. But then everyone knows the hated Japanese are better-looking by a mile even though they are bastards_

_Oh, what we had because it's over_

  
  
Jeonghan started as he opened his front door to see Hansol staring there. "I want to talk to him. We've got a lot of legal shit with the fucking house to sort out before he fucks off somewhere else." Hansol said, glaring at Jeonghan.

"You need to go. I don't want you here; Jisoo isn't here - come in, look if you want." Jeonghan stood back to let Hansol into his house, but Hansol didn't move. Jeonghan scoffed, pushing back some of his blonde hair. "He's never coming back, Hansol. he should have fucking left you years ago, I don't know why he didn't - what the fuck did he even see in you in the first place?" Jeonghan quickly slammed his front door shut and slipped the lock into place as Hansol roared out in pure rage.

  
  
_Well there must be something in the tide_

  
  
"We sold the hotel and the wedding venue in LA. It was a stupid idea all around. My Mother knew I always hated it there, and her food was Sicilian. Americans don't appreciate Sicilian food. They just think we are like the Mainland Italians, we just eat pasta in cheap purred tomato. Bullshit. We've got style with our food." Teresa smoked a cigarette as she talked. She was wearing a long black voile dress with a petticoat underneath, in Doc Marten boots and none of her usual necklaces around her throat today. 

"How is your Mother?" Jisoo asked Teresa as they walked through the Seoul Botanic Park.

  
"Cooking. Food was always the way to her heart." Teresa replied uninterestedly, taking a bottle of water out of her handbag to sip at it to dull the hunger pains.

Jisoo hadn't told Seungcheol because it would had put him through the roof, but they were lucky if Teresa ate three days of the week. Four days of the week, when Jisoo had been beside her all the time, she never ate, not a single crumb. And on the other three days, it would be tiny amounts. An apple, three or four grapes. A peace, a nectarine. Sometimes a whole bowl of food she might have spent time making with her Mother. Sicilians didn't just eat. There were no such things as "dinner-time", "lunch". "Snacks." It was a banquet, fit to sings Kings dead to God, and to revive Queens within the grave._ Involtini di pesce spade_,_ Fegato di vitello alla Milanese, Porchetta ariccia._ Regina Vincent was the answer to Sicilian Food.

  
"Is that why you don't eat?" Jisoo asked. Teresa stopped walking and looked at him.

"I'm sorry." Jisoo said, his throat going dry. "That was - I shouldn't have said that."  
  
Teresa shrugged her shoulders, offering Jisoo the cigarette; he shook his head. "There's a lot of reasons why I don't eat." She said.

"Did you get that tattoo done?" He asked as they sat on the ground beneath a towering willow tree.

  
Teresa chuckled, and Jisoo blushed as she undid the button at the back of her dress, and pushed it off her shouders. On her back was a small tattoo of a _Rusalka_, a Russian water spirit, like a mermaid. But the _Rusalka_ turned vicious and dark when it was approached by lecherous men, and other human beings were just black inside. The whole core of them filthy. The_ Rusalka's_ would kill them away, dragging them down to the depths of their oceans, rivers, and lakes.

  
Jisoo leaned forward and kissed the _Rusalka_ tattoo, pulling away as Teresa turned around to look at him, before a slow smile curved up her mouth.

  
  
_I've been told, I've been told to get you off my mind_

Jeonghan eyes widened as he received his first sight of Teresa Vincent, who right now was making his heart clench in and out so tightly that he thought he might be having a heart-attack. He glanced at Jisoo, and saw the adoration his aura gave when he looked at her - he was gazing at her then - and suddenly the pain that came and went become entirely more significant. Hansol was gone - Hansol was completely out of the equation.

Yet here now was a funny-looking girl standing before him with panda-bear make-up eyes and a long Slavic nose, ready to just push him out as she looked him up and down in a way that Jeonghan couldn't describe because he couldn't read her. She murmured something to Jisoo in a language that Jeonghan recognized as Italian or something similar to it, but her accent sounded Russian. It confused Jeonghan, until he remembered what Jisoo had said about Teresa been half Sicilian half Russian. 

  
  
_But I hope I never lose the bruises that you left behind_

  
  
Jeonghan looked over the back of the couch and hid a laugh behind his hand as Teresa chattered dry-toned to Seungcheol in Russian, all the while he had no idea what she was on about. She smoked as she worked in the kitchen, the cigarette dangling from her lip with a tea-towel over her shoulder. Teresa had always hated food; Jisoo was in awe and surprise seeing her for the first time cooking food. He knew - though Jeonghan and Seungcheol didn't - that she wouldn't touch a bite of any of the food she would cook. She had insisted on doing her_ porchetta arricia_ to go with Seungcheol's rice and steamed vegetables. _Porchetto arricia_, served in panini bread, was crispy pork rind stuffed with rosemary, garlic and black-pepper. In Italy, it was known as _Fraschette_.

  
"Do you like her?" Jisoo asked, getting Jeonghan's attention back with the silky tone of his voice, and the way he ran a fingertip down the line of Jeonghan's spine, Jisoo's hands having slipped beneath Jeonghan's black shirt. Jisoo's touch sent fire up his skin, and Jeonghan wanted to pin him down to the couch and invade his space. Press their foreheads and noses together and finally kiss him.

If Teresa hadn't turned up, Jeonghan tried to cherish the thought that he might have had a chance, even though he was sure Jisoo still ached in the memories of Chwe Hansol no matter how much Jisoo pushed it all down and hid it away. He tried to cherish it, but Jeonghan knew that Jisoo must have been thinking about Teresa for a long time; look at her here now in Seungcheol's house, cooking Sicilian food with her formidable, dry manner and her heavy Russian accent.

  
"Yes." Jeonghan lied. "She's really cute."

  
Jisoo's expression flickered, and Jeonghan stared at him.

  
"If you know her for more than ten seconds, you never say that about her." Jisoo replied simply, averting his eyes to look back over to Teresa who was holding an extremely large knife, and despite her skinniess, powerful cut and prepared what was the gutted left side of a pig.

  
"What would I say then?" Jeonghan asked Jisoo hesitantly.

  
"You would say she's cold and she's dry. You would say she's not normal." Jisoo ran his hand through his hair. "You would say she's damaged, but she's still someone's little girl. She's most people's bad dream, or their pity, but to me she's my friend. For all her melancholy, I care for her. She matters a lot to me."

_Oh my Lord, Oh my Lord, I need you by my side_

Even after Jeonghan had left and Seungcheol had gone to bed, Jisoo stayed awake with Teresa in the sitting room, talking to her about anything and everything, wrapped up in blankets on the couch.

  
"Seungcheol's cool." Teresa said. "And Jeonghan's definitely in love with you."

  
Jisoo shook his head. "No, Teresa, he's just worried about me -"

  
"No." Tereza shook her head in disagreement, reaching out and touching Jisoo's forehead with her index finger. "Can't you see it, Jisoo? Look at me." Jisoo raised his chin as she asked. "You're a beautiful Korean man, and so is Jeonghan. You say you're American, they say you're American. Look at you; your black hair and your skin and your monolid eyes. _La mia dolce bambino_. If you want him, have him." She leaned back into the couch. "You and the other boy were having a fucked-up time?" She said of Hansol.

  
Jisoo's hand curved around his neck as he nodded. "Teresa, you know I love you right?" He felt his chest seize up as Teresa wrinkled her nose and lit a cigarette; single-handedly, she had just flipped him without a care.

  
"Well, why are you here then?" Jisoo challenged her. "Come from Moscow or Sicily on a plane all the way to Korea because I - how does this not mean anything?"

  
"I wasn't in Russia or Sicily. I was in Cornwall, England." Teresa supplied. "You know we're both too young and screwed-up to consider serious shit like this, Jisoo. You're a grown man whose been letting himself get beat up by his boyfriend -"

  
"I hit him back, Teresa." Jisoo said, feeling anger swirl in him. "I tried, but Hansol was always stronger -"

  
"Well, then why did you stay?" Teresa's lip curled slightly as she inhaled cigarette smoke.

  
"Because that's what you do when you love someone, Teresa, but what would you know about love?" Jisoo shot back. Teresa looked at him coldly.

  
"You're right." She said simply. "I don't know anything about love. I never really understood what made you happy, but I guess this -" she gestured to Seungcheol's house around her and beyond. " - has something to do with it."

_There must be something in the water_

"You make me happy, Teresa." Jisoo said. Teresa looked at him like he was nothing.

  
"You say that and only a couple of days ago you had your lungs and your ribs broken by your boyfriend." She answered listlessly, cigarette ash crumbling away onto her bare knee. It was left there, un-noticed and un-felt by Teresa. "Grow the fuck up."

  
Jisoo hung his head as Teresa's hand trembled as she put the filter of the cigarette back between her lips.

  
"What happened?" Jisoo said; a tear slipped down the side of Teresa's face that Jisoo couldn't see.

  
"I kissed someone I shouldn't have." She said. She looked at Jisoo. He groaned her name softly, and shifted across the couch to embrace her; Teresa's went to stone in his arms as he comforted her.

  
"You wouldn't be wanting to hold me." Teresa said stiffly. Jisoo stroked her hair.

  
"Why not?" He asked.

  
"I kissed my half-brother, Will. And he wants more." Teresa answered. 

  
Jisoo held onto her tighter and closer, and didn't let her go all night.

_'Cause everyday it's getting colder_

"You know I've only got two weeks, right?" Teresa said to Jisoo as she walked out of the door of Seungcheol's house in a pair of spaghetti-strap black cotton dungarees, a stragetically tucked-in black silk petticoat, several necklaces and a choker, with her hair lank and heavy down her back and her Bardot eye-makeup, only less chic and more panda-bear style. She had no shoes on. "I'll be back soon."

  
Jisoo nodded gratefully as Seungcheol asked if he wanted a cup of tea. 

  
"Did you hear what Teresa said last night?" Jisoo asked Seungcheol, forgetting for a moment that he and Teresa had been talking in English, Seungcheol had probably been alseep over been awake and eavesdropping, and that Seungcheol couldn't speak English anyhow.

  
"Was it something to do with Jeonghan?" Seungcheol guessed, glad Jisoo was opening up and talking. Jisoo had been cold as of late; once upon a time, he used to tell them everything. If not to Seungcheol, then definitely to Jeonghan.

  
"She thinks he wants me. He's in love with me." Jisoo said, grasping the mug in his hands as Seungcheol placed it down in front of him. "Teresa said to me last night, "You're a beautiful Korean man, and so is Jeonghan. You say you're American, they say you're American. Look at you; your black hair and your skin and your monolid eyes. _La mia dolce bambino_. If you want him, have him"." Jisoo gazed at Seungcheol.

  
"La mee-ah dolt..." Seungcheol experimented with the Italian phrase; it made Jisoo snort a laugh. Of everything he had just said, that was the bit that Seungcheol had been msot caught by. 

  
"_La mia dolce bambino_. It's Italian for, "my sweet baby"." Jisoo explained. He laughed more as Seungcheol wrinkled his nose for a moment and commented about it been fairly uncharacteristic for Teresa.

_And if only I could hold you_

"_Yobseyo_, pretty-boy," Teresa offered up to Jeonghan, using an umbrella like a walking stick as she walked down the footpath towards him. She had found from Jisoo without Jisoo overly realizing what Jeonghan's adress was. Teresa pulled out her phone and with the help of a Korean-English translation app, talked into it. "You know you've got nothing to worry about with me, right?" She sort of smiled as a robotic Korean voice came out of her phone, and Jeonghan's expression changed drastically. "You're pretty, you don't seem like an arsehole. But the sound of the saw is always known by the tree. Do it with Jisoo; don't be chicken. And if it all breaks down and gets fucked up I'll piece it back together again. Jisoo used to be afraid of fire but that was long ago."

_You'd keep my head from going under_

_Don't pressure him_, Jeonghan thought. _Let him know you don't want that for him and you don't mean anything like that at all._

  
He glanced at Teresa beside him in the taxi; the driver had protested against her smoking, but when she had given him one, he mumbled about his wife forcing him to give up before their baby was born. He consented to the tobacco been lighted up if the windows were put down and the ash wasn't dropped on his carpet.

  
"It's easier been ironic over been human." Teresa said to him in English, before typing it into the Korean-English translator on her phone. Jeonghan snorted a laugh as he heard the translation.

  
"No offence, but you don't even look human, or move like one. You look like you should be in a crumbling Roman-Catholic Monastery in Sicily, or somewhere in a lake in Russia - in the mountains. You'd be so cool up there." Jeonghan replied, talking into the phone.

  
"I was swimming in a lake before I came here on the plane." Teresa's scrunched her nose up, offering Jeonghan the cigarette. He took hesitantly, not a clue in the world how to do it.

  
"But it's the middle of winter." He sucked in some of the smoke through the filter and immediately coughed as hot and bizarre tasting substance filled up his mouth, throat and his nose. Teresa and the taxi driver - looking the review-vision mirror - laughed.

  
"That is horrible." Jeonghan gave the cigarette back to Teresa.

  
"Nice jacket, by the way." She looked him up and down. "Fancy. Still going to take him out tonight?"

Jeonghan nodded. "Do all the right things. Don't be chicken." He mumbled.

  
"Jisoo's a bit of a chicken, don't worry about it." Teresa said drily. "Just don't be a turkey, order bad alcohol, or choke on your food and then have to get some idiot to give you the Heimlich manoeuvre."

_ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh_

"Jeonghan?" Jisoo asked, coming down the steps of the raised deck-come-verandah that was built off the back of Seungcheol's house, the house itself been built on a bit of a natural slope. He was thankful he hadn't needed crutches, but the slight limp was something he didn't like dealing with while his knee was taped up.

  
"Hi." Jeonghan waved to him, smiling in a way that Jisoo immeidately frowned over. He knew Jeonghan was like that when he was trying to buy himself time because he was in a state of fear or shock.

"Hey, Soo, I need to talk to you about something, but I don't really have the words. It's pathetic of me -"

  
"What's Hansol done?" Jisoo cut in, looking at Jeonghan wide-eyed, wrapping his arms around himself, still feeling the twinges of pain from the damage to his ribs beneath his skin.

  
"What? No, no, no." Jeonghan said, grasping Jisoo's shoulders as the younger man relaxed. "I need to tell you something, but I don't know how to." Jeonghan's funny smile came back again, nervous and unsure. Jisoo inclined his head to him, smiling slightly.

  
"Just tell me." Jisoo replied.

"How can I do that when you have no idea how beautiful you looked right now out here in the light even though it's nearly six 'o' clock and it's just gone very dark and you're just something that I cannot even describe because I just want you so much?" Jeonghan said softly, a part of his brain disconnecting so the fear and the unsureness fell away, and smooth, un-hampered honesty spilled from him like wine in Sicily's fountains at the Spring Solstice. "I can't put anything into words because these feelings are just too strong."

"Oh..." Jisoo managed, sitting down on the third bottom step of the wooden stairs. His eyes couldn't help but slight shut after a few moments as Jeonghan's fingers ghosted over his scalp, pushing his hair back from his face. The gravity of been without touch like that for so long hit Jisoo with the force of a ten-ton wrecking ball. For months, he knew his eyes had told so many lies, and too many times, he had been down on his knees. He had been praying for closed doors and open windows and, sub-consciously, Hansol gone from his life and maybe someone knew who looked like Hansol. But those dreams had changed as Teresa's long-fingered hands invaded his dreams, and as he had lain in the hospitable bed, he had felt the ghost touch of her hands on his shoulders and chest, neck and cheekbones even though it was only him, the other old man, and occasionally a nurse coming in and out of that hospitable room. 

_It's your love I'm lost in, your love I'm lost in, your love I'm lost in_

Jisoo chuckled softly, looking up at Jeonghan. "Oh my God, I've kept you running around for so long." He said. 

  
Jeonghan crouched down on the ground before Joshua. "I'd get down on my knees for you, but you know you know you already know that, right?" 

  
Jisoo laughed more with Jeonghan's laugh intermingling with his. That's what it was; he and Jeonghan laughing their heads off - but trying to be quiet all the same - in a dark Mid-Autumn night outside on their best friends deck. All the leaves had been coming off the trees steadily, and Jisoo started to really, really notice the white-blonde colour of Jeonghan's hair.

"That's the problem with life," Jisoo leaned forward to whisper in Jeonghan's ear, his lips brushing against it lightly. Jeonghan kneeled on the bottom step so they could be closer, and Jisoo felt him shiver slightly at the proximity or rather, the lack of it, in-between them. "You don't even realize you're in this crazy kaleidoscope of glory until it's too late."

"Not too late." Jeonghan said, pressing his nose and forehead up against Jisoo's. The two of them stayed like that for a while, breathing each others air and been as well.

"Your knees must be killing you." Jisoo sung, grinning.

"Yeah, they are." Jeonghan groaned as he hefted himself up onto the third step from the bottom, sitting beside Jisoo. 

_And I'm tired of been so exhausted_

"So, what do we do now?"

  
"Make-out?" Jeonghan suggested, midly hopeful, lying back against the other steps; it was a bit uncomfortable, but he didn't mind. He needed to lean back against something right now, otherwise the moment he had to stand, he was going to fall over and break his neck. That was all Seungcheol needed; two invalids. Jeonghan had a feeling that Teresa would find his suffering quite funny.

  
"I said, "what do we do now" not "what do you want to do"." Jisoo said, laughing more. He reached out, and ran his thumb over Jeonghan's lower lip, dragging it slightly. Jisoo grinned at the colour that came into Jeonghan's mouth and cheekbones and the look that swept everything former away in his eyes. "But that's all you've been thinking about, right?"

  
"Not exactly." Jeonghan commented wryly.

  
"Oh, yeah, that's right, you've been thinking about other stuff as well." Jisoo rolled his eyes, though he wasn't at all offended by it. It made his heart beat faster, to know that Jeonghan had wanted him so much that he had thought of his body and what it would be like under his hands. _He's going to have to wait a bit until my ribs heal up. Let's see if he can manage eight or nine weeks_, Jisoo thought. Absurdly, it made him smile. 

"How exhausting as it been?" Jisoo inquired.

  
"What do you mean?"

  
"Teresa. With me. Me with Teresa. Me wanting her - her been the only thing I want right now." Jisoo leant his head against his knees on the side, looking at Jeonghan. "Are you jealous?"

  
"I was." Jeonghan said. "But then I spent some time with her, and she introduced me to smoking in the back of a taxi." Jisoo raised an eyebrow at that quip. "Oh, it's fucking awful, don't worry, I won't be doing it." Jeonghan pulled a face. "What the fuck is in those things? Apart from rat poison and road tar and the Ebola virus?" 

Both young men looked up to the sky and the line of Seungcheol's roof as they heard a cry of laughter and Sicilian language with what sounded like a cork popping loudly out of a bottle. "I think Teresa and Cheol are getting drunk inside. Wait, listen. Hear it." Jeonghan said, leaning up on his elbow. The sound came up again in the form of Seungcheol calling Teresa, "_Babushka_."

  
"Oh, she'll love that." Jisoo said. "Babushka gets her really deep. She might be so happy she might smile at him."

  
All it took was one look at the both of them before they were nearly pissing themselves laughing. Jisoo groaned in pain, holding his side gingerly as the sudden convulsion sent pain through his muscles. 

  
"Soft laugh, soft laugh." Jisoo said, his mouth falling open as the pain receded.

_Your love I'm lost in, your love I'm lost in, your love I'm lost in_

Jisoo caught Jeonghan's hand in a hold as they climbed the rest of the stairs. Jeonghan looked back around at them, and felt too many parts of him retreat to the Ukiyo. When Jeonghan had been with Takashi before Takashi had had to leave Seoul back to Tokyo, and then to his home in the Mitake Mountains, with he held Ukiyo all of the time. "Ukiyo is the place the two of us fade to. Ukiyo is living in the moment...deatched from the brothers of life. The floating world." Takashi had whispered to him one Winter morning last year beneath the sheets of Jeonghan's bed, too close together for words.

"You know..." Jisoo said so quietly that it just looked like his lips were moving and that the entire world around them was deaf. "I've been praying for something like this."

  
Together, with Jisoo's heartbeat settled for the confession he just made while Jeonghan's rushed at a hundred miles an hour, they saw the coffee-table shifted into the kitchen as Seungcheol and Teresa danced - a mixture of Sicilian and Serbian folk-traditions - in the adjoined kitchen-dining-sitting rooms in the open-planned designed interior. All of a sudden, Teresa had jumped up into Seungcheol's arms, her legs wrapped around his waist; with her hands interlocked around his neck, they both laughed as he swung her around.

"I haven't seen her like this for years. She's not like this usually." Jisoo said, leaning his head on Jeonghan's shoulder, the two of them unnoticed by Teresa and Seungcheol, watching through the glasses sliding doors that opened out onto the deck. "But people follow to where the wind blows, don't they?"

  
"What about you, though?" Jeonghan asked. "You and Teresa?"

  
"She's got stuff going on back home; a really complicated set of a love-related things." Jisoo took his head off Jeonghan's shoulder. "I said to her about us becoming something because we both have enough of what could make it. She just looked at me and said "bullshit. Your old boyfriend just broke your ribs and your lungs and you say this to me". She started to tell me about some of the stuff that went on back home. "You wouldn't want to be holding me" she said, when she told me. I held onto her all night. I don't think she actually realized just how much I care for her."

_Even though I'm nothing to you now_

"Are you going to make her realize?" Jeonghan asked.

  
"No, but she still wears the necklace I bought her when she was sixteen; the one that's hanging directly beside her heart. Underneath the gold and the pearls and her skin, I'm in there somewhere." Jisoo replied.

  
"What you just said there...and the one about life and kaleidiscopes and glory - you need to write it down." Jeonghan mused; he and Jisoo's mouths fell open as Seungcheol, supporting Teresa's neck and back, swung her low down towards the ground in a dip. Teresa's hair swept across the floor before she came back upright again, laughing so much that he chin and throat had virtually become one, her nose looked even bigger, and the rest of her features were very small, eyes just black streaks of eye-liner.  
"Teresa doesn't want me. Teresa doesn't want a lot of people. Doesn't mean she wants them dead or out of her life, altogether." Jisoo explained. "I hope that Seungcheol is prepared for the shock when she has to go."

  
"You're so sexy when you get philosophical and deep." Jeonghan gazed over Jisoo, melted. He righted himself when Jisoo frowned at him, serious. "What the hell are they listening to?" Jeonghan coughed, saying that instead.

  
"There's a song by an Irish band called Dexie's Midnight Runners called "Come On, Eileen". That is a Russian-language cover of that song." Jisoo informed Jeonghan.

_Even though I'm nothing to you now_

Chwe Hansol walked through his Father's office, and locked up the interior space and the rest of the factories which stored building supplies, cranes, forklifts, landscaping equipment, trucks, utes and trailers, before getting in his car and driving to the next other place he knew Jisoo would be; Choi Seungcheol's house that was built on the side of a bloody drop

  
It didn't matter a fuck it was eleven 'o' clock at night. Hansol's hands gripped the steering wheel tightly as he drove.

  
Hansol walked around to the back of Seungcheol's house, climbing over the side fence along the right side of the house that led through the back garden. He saw lights on inside as he climbed the stairs to the deck, but there was no one around as he pushed open the glass sliding door and stepped inside. Cushions and blankets were scattered over the couch, with magazines and book sand a newspaper on the floor; the coffee table was sitting surface down on the kitchen island, and a kettle was halfway through the process of boiling. A moment later, a young Serbian looking woman - dangerously thin - and very tall walked into the living space utterly naked except for a pair of black knickers with a little black bow on the front. Her hair was long and damp like she had been caught in the rain, curtains either side of her face. Her eyes were lined roundly with black eye-liner, and she was extremely curious to look at, but not...she wasn't ugly.

  
She spoke in clear cut Russian to him, chucking her chin up as Hansol called out Jisoo's name.

  
"I don't know what you're fucking saying." Hansol said to her lightly, as she pressed her arms over her breasts, trying to cover herself up a little bit under his gaze.  
"What did you say at the hospital?" Hansol rounded on Jisoo as the man appeared down the hallway. "That's all I want to know." He scoffed a laugh as Jisoo just looked at him silently.

  
"I said I slipped in the bath. I don't want to do any of the stuff with the Police. I don't give a fuck about you or anything else. This is just fake, and it's shit." Jisoo said. Hansol looked over at the naked girl as she wandered over to the kettle that had now finished boiling. "How did you get in here?"

  
"Calm down, like, the door was open. This your fucking girlfriend is it? You have a sulk at me about the receptionist at Dad's -" Hansol gestured over to Teresa, before a flashing of flying metal went past his head and imbedded itself in the wall just behind him, an inch to the side of his head. Teresa threw a meat cleaver up and down in the air, repeatedly catching the handle back in her hand, glaring at Hansol.

  
"Now fuck off." She said, Russian and violently threatening.

_There must be something in the water_

"What are you listening to?" Jisoo asked Teresa, kissing her forehead as she woke up again having half gone to sleep with her headphones on her head on Seungcheol's couch. It was a week later, and Teresa had one more day in Seoul before she was due to fly back to Moscow. Between all three of them, Seungcheol, Jeonghan and Jisoo had got Teresa out a bit, showing her the City and they had gone to the cinema once to watch a film Teresa had wanted to see called "The Handmaiden". Within twenty minutes of figuring out what is, Jisoo, Jeonghan and Seungcheol rushed out of theatre at the first lesbian sex scene.

  
"Did you know?!" Jeonghan asked, laughing to Jisoo.

  
"Of course not!" Jisoo replied. "She - Teresa said there was a film she wanted to see and that it was called that. I thought it might be like Downton Abbey or something; that's a show in England. It's set in the early 1900's and it's about an artistocratic family and their servants. I didn't realize it was psychotically erotic and full of murder and -"

  
"That." Jeonghan and Seungcheol supplied.

  
"Right, one of has to go back in, we can't just leave her in there." Seungcheol said.  
"Yes, we can!" Jisoo and Jeonghan replied.

  
"You're the reason she's here." Seungcheol pointed out.

  
"Hey, I didn't get my crotch that close to hers as you did the other night when you were half drunk and dancing to awful Russian music." Jisoo shot back. In the end, he won the argument, but Jisoo knew that Seungcheol wasn't as irked as he presented himself about going back into the theatre. Jisoo was sure that with Teresa sitting far up the back, she would have turned and kissed him at some point. The times Jisoo had ever been kissed by Teresa was in a cinema in central LA when they were nine years old, and then twelve years old. He told Jeonghan that, and later, he told Seungcheol. He didn't add about the ones up against willow trees, or at Christmas in her families' hotel in the poshest suite in the building.

_'Cause everyday it's getting colder_

"WINTER'S NEARLY HERE!" Teresa announced happily on the last day she was in Seoul, coming into the kitchen from the bathroom in a pair of knitted stay-up stockings, denim shorts, a loose a-line mesh t-shirt with a jersey bra underneath. She had on dark red lipstick that made her lips look bigger, and not just eyeliner; she had some eye-shadow on, a nice sort of day-emo style when Jisoo got her to close her eyes so he could inspect the style. "First day of December."

  
"She's changed." Jeonghan commented to Seungcheol over the rim of his coffee mug. For the last two nights Jeonghan had been sleeping with Jisoo in the spare bedroom, while Teresa was on the couch. Over the time, Jeonghan had slept in his own house, thinking that Jisoo wouldn't have him in the spare bed with him and Jeonghan didn't completely trust himself to not accidentally hurt Jisoo in the middle of the night by a flying elbow connecting with his ribs as he turned over. But, Jeonghan was sure Teresa had made a remark about it to Jisoo, because two nights ago, when Jeonghan had collected his car keys to leave, Jisoo had slipped his hands to his and guided him back down the hallway, murmuring, "Not tonight, Hannie."

_And if only I could hold you_

"We'd love you - all of us - to come back for something a bit longer. Long-term, if you'd like." Jisoo said to Teresa, holding her tight as they dropped her off at the airport. Jeonghan and Seungcheol had come with him to the airport, and Jisoo could tell Teresa was happy they did. What Jisoo said next to her, he said in Italian so those words were only for Teresa's ears. "Whatever happens with Will...if you find yourself hurting, and alone, all you have to do is book a plane ticket and come out. If you don't have the money, we'll pay. Teresa, you know I don't think it's right." Jisoo stroked her cheek. "You know I think it's...it's out of this world. I just want you to be alright."

  
"It's fucked-up and mental and it's sick. But no one's going to catch us. No one knows." Teresa hung her head as visions of her Mother and her Father's new wife and everything else including visions of the LA hotel and the Moscow hotel and the hotel they had made in the form of an old castle in West England in her mind. It made a shiver run down her spine.

  
"But, hey..." Jisoo coaxed her to look back at him. "_La mia dolce bambino_. No more secrets, promise?"

  
Teresa nodded as he kissed the back of her hand, clasping it in two of his own. "Siete amati." _You are loved_.

_You'd keep my head from going under_

Jisoo sighed, leaning his head back against the head-rest of the car, closing his eyes heavily.

  
"You alright, Soo?" Jeonghan checked.

  
Jisoo smiled weakly. "Not that she ever gives much energy, but with Teresa leaving I feel like she's taken all of mine with her." He groaned. "I've got to see Mingyu later as well; through a contact he got me especially up the list to see a Doctor who deals with internal injuries and oesteo-medicines." Jisoo looked out of the window as Seungcheol climbed into the drivers seat, the car been his, and driving out of the airport car-park. "I feel a lot of shame whenever I just think of him; I wish I could avoid him and never see him again." Jisoo added quietly.

  
"Don't blackside him because of how you feel." Seungcheol said, purposely not saying Hanol's name. "He's a friend, remember that, Jisoo. You wouldn't be able to breathe with Mingyu."

  
Jisoo kept repeating that to himself as he walked into the private clinic which was established in the big old sandstone mansion of a former English merchant in the 1930's, in the rich, tree-lined streets of Seoul where despite the old-worldiness, it was seven figures entry on the market.

  
While Jisoo was at the clinic, waiting for a home x-ray massion to be fired up as he lay on a table with gel had rubbed laid down over the right side of his chest so gently by a nurse who had acted as though her life depended on his comfort, Mingyu visited him and then conducted the x-ray with an assisting radiographer.

_There must be something in the water_

"Do you think you're going to hear from him, again?" Mingyu asked.

  
"I think he only came around again to check that he wasn't going to be expecting the Police. Hansol's probably been wondering why they hadn't turned up on his doorstep, yet." Jisoo replied.

  
Mingyu nodded, understanding. "You look happier." He remarked, tapping Jisoo under his chin.

  
"Yeah." Jisoo smiled. "I had a good talk to my parents that I haven't done for a while. Not about this, they'll never know about this. I was talking about other things. A friend of mine got on a plane and came over. She was here for two weeks, and, God, she did a lot even though she's a world-class, melancholic cow."

  
"Keep in touch, eh?" Mingyu said. _Don't push me out because I was involved in what was the worst day of you life_, were the words that lay un-said inbetween them.

  
"Sure."

_'Cause everyday it's getting colder_

"Look at this." Jisoo showed Jeonghan his phone a month later, a text from Teresa, sitting in-between Jeonghan's legs on Jeonghan's bed.

  
** _IT'S WINTER - IT'S CHRISTMAS_ **

  
"It's so cold now in Russia that all her lakes have frozen over so now she has to just stick to leaving the air-conditioning on and having cold bath." Jisoo laughed. Unseen by Jisoo, Jeonghan frowned, thinking Teresa absolutely insane. Maybe that was another reason she was so thin, as well; she was cold all the time.

  
_And if only I could hold you_

Jeonghan ran his hands up and down Jisoo's arms, crossed over his chest. He pressed his face down into the crook between Jisoo's neck and shoulder, feeling the warmth there. "When can I touch you?" Jeonghan gave a mixed laugh and a sigh, his eyes sliding to a close.

  
"Just a bit longer."

  
Jeonghan exhaled heavily, wishing it wasn't the case. He wanted the time to go by quick so he could finally -

  
"Hey. Hannie." Joshua turned around in-between Jeonghan's legs, kneeling in-between them. "Is Christmas Day too soon to have Teresa back? Because I'm thinking..." He grinned a bit. "Either that, or you miss out on me because I might go to Moscow."

  
"Don't you fucking dare." Jeonghan said, making Jisoo burst out laughing, before he leant his face down and neatly slid his tongue into Jeonghan's mouth.

  
"I'm just messing about." Jisoo whispered. "By Christmas I should be alright. You can have me then."

  
Jeonghan ran the back of his knuckle down Jisoo's throat. "It's different now, everything, isn't it?" Jeonghan mused quietly, enjoying the closeness of Jisoo's body that he's never had before, and had been desiring for years. And it had been years as well. Over half a decade of longing, dreams of the sweet kind, the sad kind, the sexual kind. The sexual ones had always been the best, and the most clear to his Jeonghan's brighter side. In them at least he knew what he wanted, and what Jisoo wanted. In the sad dreams, they were disturbingly clear as well, particularly to Jeonghan's worst side. The sweet dreams, the happy dreams had always been more than slightly vague. Jeonghan couldn't really think of anything like that; it never seemed real enough, even though up until this point it had all been fantasy.

  
"What do you want for Christmas?" Jeonghan asked.

  
"You."

  
"That's ridiculous." Jeonghan ran the side of his finger down the line of Jisoo's nose.

  
"You think you're the only one who has missed having sex?" Jisoo quipped. "I don't know what I miss more; having sex, been able to bend over, or generally moving quickly."

_You'd keep my head from going under_

"So..." Seungcheol grinned at Teresa over their facetime screen. "What does Moscow look like?"


End file.
